[Award Winner] Antique-style maps in Photoshop

[m-boy]

Thanks for the comment, Ascension ^^
"tweaks and style" there is just me playing around with filters and blending modes - so I wouldn't call it style yet as I didn't even remember all the tweaks I did >.>

@Eagleyes: maybe blurring the mountains layer a bit would blend it more with the rest of the map; also branching the rivers could probably make them more interesting (Step 7 from the Tutorial, where it explicitly tells to "not forget to put in forks and branches" - here's a real-world example for some ideas); I hope you'll find the suggestions helpful ^^

I'll try making another map using this Tutorial in a few days and post it too, it's a great pleasure working with it

[TheMeanestGuest]

Hey Ascension, I decided to use your technique but was sort of confused by step 7. It said to use a hard square pencil, but I don't have hard square, is there another pencil type that would suffice?

Also just thought I'd include where I'm at now. I decided to use my own mountains (since I went on to start them since the rivers flumoxed me), and we'll see how it turns out.

[Ascension]

The hard squares are in the Preset folder, they don't come loaded straight out of the box but they're there if you need them. To load them them, use the preset manager, the brush menu is the default that pops up. On the right side you'll see a button for "load brushes" or "add" or something like that. This will pop open a window for you to go browsing so navigate to the Photoshop folder, then presets, then brushes, then load up those thingies. There should also be an additional folder in the brushes folder called "Photoshop Only" and there are more brushes in there.

If you don't want to do that or get lost trying, then use a hard round

[Eagleyes]

I really liked your clean map, the wood effect is a good alternative and I loved the aztec style borders!

[m-boy]

thanks for your comments!
actually the map was having rings at the start. I even tried to break their regularity and hard corners by editing the layers for each of the rings but while zoomed in I messed them up a lot at one moment... and decided to try the wood effect and can now say that I like it much more than the rings

attached here is a piece of the map with modified rings (not the messed up part, of course xD)

[Ascension]

That looks real good. I can honestly say that you do it better.

[Ramah]

M-Boy I love your "Final printed" image that you posted, the one on old paper, really wonderful. If I had a single nitpick, it's that your grid lines have an outer glow to them that erases parts of the labels, although I guess you wanted this?

[ravells]

Very nice indeed, m-boy. I really like the subtle hatching.

[m-boy]

Thank you guys, for all the positive comments!

Modifying the rings really improves the map but the way I did it was a veeery slow (editing 10 layers one by one is simply too much) and stressful (the moment I realized I had to fix the rings on like a quarter of the map was awful) process. Maybe for a smaller map (or at least, one continent only) that would be quite useable, though.

Ramah, I cannot take much credit for the "Final printed" looks as I used the paper from a real old map for it and just pasted my map over (after cloning away the thing that was originally showing).
Regarding the lines and their outer glow, though, you give me a nice idea. If I put them below all the labels' layers then the labels would be wholly visible and erase a bit from the grid lines (cause they have outer glow, too) but that won't be a problem. Since because the lines are straight, our eyes would see them straight even if they have some tiny breaks. And the outer glow is there (as Ascension mentioned in the Tutorial) because in general it's a characteristic of the antique maps to have many labels and details that are easily readable.

[Stargazer]

I am currently working on a map of my own based on this awesome tutorial.

Any comments?